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Summary
Donald Trump’s popularity among Generation Z voters has sharply declined since the 2024 election, according to a new Economist/YouGov poll.
His net favorability among 18-29-year-olds has dropped from +19 in November to -18, raising concerns for Republicans about sustaining youth support.
While Trump gained ground with young voters in 2024, recent policies—such as his mass deportation plan and targeting of DEI initiatives—may have contributed to this decline.
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How was he popular in the first place
Gen Z desperately wants change, any change and Dems were against change.
That’s my take at least.
Half of Trump votes and a bigger part of abstentions are a protest directed at the economic system that, in the aftermath of Covid, got rich people richer while most people got reduced buying power in the form of inflation.
Then surprise surprise: sh!t policies and more inflation. Can Trump keep control of this growing rage or…
There’s also a lot of incel Zoomers. I think that’s where the bulk or his youth support came from.
It’s so stupid because it’s entirely typical for guys 12-22 to not be getting laid, and the boys who get sucked into this extremist bullshit shouldn’t be thinking they are victims of anything other than typical adolescents. The dumb kid to neo nazi pipeline is really shitty and clearly still works very effectively.
Well, that’s true, but the Zoomers are facing some unique headwinds. They’re the first generation to come of age in a post internet era, and I’ve heard people argue that being inundated with social media as well as having such easy access to pornography is giving them a warped view of sex and personal intimacy. There’s also data going back to 2017 saying they have less sex than previous generations. And on top of that, many of them had Covid interrupt what should have been their formative sexual years.
Anyway, I’m certainly not excusing any of these little shits that become Nazis. But when I think about how I was as an adolescent, and then think about what these kids have to deal with, I can definitely understand how someone like Andrew Tate could manipulate them.
It’s more that Gen Z wants change without putting in effort. They (and millennials too) aren’t voting in primaries at all let alone showing up in non Presidental elections so all parties are putting money and effort into candidates that appeal to older, more conservative voters that actual show up.
The younger people I work with and interact with on a regular basis that admit they voted for Trump say they didn’t do it because he appealed to them but because they had some protest against Harris or Biden. Dems dropped the ball entirely this election but the majority of voters fail to turn out and prove their desire for change and progressive candidates is anything but talk.
There wasn’t a primary to vote against Harris in though. I’m not bashing you, it’s just that was a mistake IMO.
There was primary for congressional seats where the actual change Gen Z keeps saying they want will have to come from. And there was basically no participation there nationwide for their generation.
I see plenty of change coming right now from the office of the President though.
Racist parents have racist kids. That’s my take.
I get that these kids were brainwashed a little but what bothers me is that it was never any secret what was happening to women’s rights and LGBTQ+ rights but they went for it anyway. It wasn’t some secret plot or trick, these people told us all exactly what they’re about.
Even if they don’t care about queer people, they happily sold out the rights of their own mothers because the word of some ex reality TV star meat head was more important to them. I feel like even if I was that age being bombarded by propaganda, I would’ve woken the fuck up the moment they started going after my mother and my sisters.
I actually saw a story on Reddit shortly after the election, that’s a double whammy in this regard. It was a divorced woman who is currently in a relationship with another woman, telling the story of how her own son visited her and fessed up to voting for Trump and happily said out loud “I don’t agree with gay people.” Based on the reactions she described afterwards, this dumb piece of shit kid only realised that the people he was hating included his own mother, after it was already too late.
It’s all fucked. I forgive these kids to an extent but I know that when I was that age, I did in fact have a sense of morality and could in fact use my own brains to figure things out for myself.
They voted for the memes, and are now in the process of realizing real life is not a meme
Yes but meme man named the department DOGE (/s)
Be aware: Newsweek put out a string of content before the election, making it clear that Harris was winning and that Democrats were in the clear when few other news outlets were being that optimistic. Recently, they’ve been putting out a lot of articles talking about how the Orange One is losing popularity. While I hope that’s true, they definitely have a weird angle. Take their content with a big grain of salt.
Where can I buy large grained salt?
Kosher salt is large grained.
You can put a bunch of it in the microwave with a bowl of water to make a humid environment that might help it to form into a huge chunk. Then you can put it in a sock to persuade your local billionaire to stop fucking up society and the planet. I may have left out a few steps, what were we talking about again?
I mean who knew he would be against DEI and immigrants?
I think these polls are bullshit. The same gen Z kids who voted Trump after being brainwashed for years watching Rogan, Shapiro, etc rail on DEI, trans, ‘wokeism’ and ‘open borders’ haven’t suddenly changed their opinion once Trump’s started enacting policies that aim to enact those goals.
These kids just recognize how unpopular these actions are in the wider community and are lying to pollsters now. It’s virtue signalling. They’ll continue to vote right-wing imho
It could be as simple as losing access to grants, scholarships, and general funding. Add to that any of them hoping for a government job doing something they’re passionate about (wildlife/park/environmental sciences) only to have their future prospects crushed by an ignorant foreigner.
You might be right, but my question here is: Has it really had time to sink in yet? They got their student aid in January when Biden was still in office. Some of them may have lost jobs, but for the most part, there hasn’t been enough time yet for the leopards to come around for their faces. And Newsweek HAS posted overly optimistic articles saying the Dems have this in the bag. Granted, we won’t know the actual outcome until 2 years from now, but I am thinking the shitheads will just blame Dems, DEI, or whatever other BS to avoid realising that it’s their own leopard eating their face.
Could be.
You mean that?
Well these days I’m starting to think I have to put
/s
behind every statement since I’m hearing so many people say things so friggin bizarre I never suspected I would ever hear such a thing and expect they were actually serious.
that’s just a weirdo who replies with “you mean that” to every comment they see that starts with “I mean”
Ah, I see. Thanks. As annoying as that is, I probably WILL try not to do that so often.
Well if this election has taught us anything…
Little too late for that…
been kind of sad for me, the process of realizing these kids were fucking stupid.
i had really high hopes for some reason.
Growing up with social media.
I genuinely think the type of social media you use in your youth has a very strong influence on the type of person you become:
Instagram/Snapchat: Average, slightly sociable
Reddit/Tumblr: Insightful, knowledgeable about niche topics/social issues (respectively), better at writing, worse at socializing
Twitter: Argumentative, not really capable of cohesive long-form thought, great at one liners though
TikTok: Mindless beasts conditioned through a variable-ratio positive reinforcement algorithm to uncritically believe whatever thoughts China wants to insert in their brains: “The US is awful!!” Heck yeah! “Because of this, we’re going to not vote/vote for Trump!” Wait, what?
Cannot wait for the types of gen z voters that voted for a dipshit like donvict to turn around and blame “boomers” for their issues.
They kinda already are. Though they seem to be blaming the Democrats for not doing enough to convince them to not be stupid.
Being raised by social media has caused some issues with them. They seem to value the ability to say whatever you need to say to get to the top of the algorithm and aren’t able to question the algorithm itself.
The zoomers are just like the boomers. They will blame anyone but themselves for their problems.
Millennials voted for trump and Republicans more than zoomers. There is plenty of blame to go around.
We are not talking about millennials in this thread. Just the zoomers.
Only us millennials are victims. /s
Everyone is a victim even the zoomers. Many just lack the critical thinking skills to realize it.
It’s okay they don’t bother coming out of their sofas to vote
I don’t trust polls anymore. Trump wasn’t supposed to win '16 and it wasn’t supposed to be a blowout '24 according to polls.
What sucks is he only won the popular vote by about 2 million votes. A lot of these states misrepresent their population with the electoral college and gerrymandering.
Gerrymandering doesn’t affect statewide elections.
it’s almost entirely up to the fact that we use FPTP voting structures in the electoral college, not the electoral college itself.
granted getting rid of FPTP is going to be easier said than done, but it would definitely benefit us in the long run.
Gerrymandering would only change a state’s electoral college votes meaningfully in one or two states.
It’s more often an issue of:
- Citizen becomes voter via “motor-votor” registration.
- Later, state sends postcard asking to confirm voter’s address.
- Voter sees postcard, looks like junkmail or fraudulent mail, discards without response.
- State, not checking anything else, drops voter from roll.
Hillary had an 80% chance of winning according to polls. That’s a lot, but Trump still had a 20% chance. That doesn’t really detract from the polls as much as from the reporting on said polls.
One would think watching Nazi salutes on inauguration day of a GOP president going blitzkrieg all around the world, would be enough to forget about them reaching the White House again… but, seriously, this is the USA.
You assume they read about history and know what Nazis were beyond tiktok memes.
Looks like they missed that year in school.
Either all of the polling sites are lying or that impotent clown still has a 47% approval rating. Why? I have no idea.
That’s odd because the only Gen z people who liked Trump were the paid Russian propogandists that were creating all the fake bullshit memes for him
I listened in on a conversation between two young male Kroger union members before the election (the store is unionized so maybe that was an assumption, it’s a right to work state…)
They both agreed they were voting for Trump. I can’t speak to their unspoken motivations but what I can tell you is they absolutely voted on vibes and didn’t have a goddamn clue what was coming for them.
I don’t know what brain rotted the Gen Z boys in a way that didn’t work on the Gen Z girls but I can tell you it wasn’t fake, those kids are not alright.
Maybe this will be Gen Z’s Afghanistan and Iraq, the events that push them left against Republican abuse, but I’m not sure they’ll have a chance when they’re getting a steady diet of algorithmic propaganda.
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Hate to say this but there are a lot of young white men who feel unheard and unseen. Trump and the right wing podcasting network really resonates with them.
The reality is society is so much better now than it was in 1995 or 2005 but many young white men feel left out because the advantages they once held are disappearing.
It used to be a that the only right person for the job was a white man or another white man. They didn’t have to compete with other races or genders cuz the game was rigged to only take them seriously. Now, having to fairly compete against women and PoC, a lot of the less capable folk are tapping out and saying “no let’s go back to the old way” because they were more competitive back then.
Yeah and it can be really frustrating because some of their complaints are valid and reasonable, some are understandable but taken to bad places, and others are insane and/or evil. Like, yes there is a serious issue with loneliness and lack of community, but no it isn’t feminism or immigrants to blame, and for some of them it’s that they’re agonizingly unpleasant to be around and mentally unstable.
I don’t know what brain rotted the Gen Z boys in a way that didn’t work on the Gen Z girls but I can tell you it wasn’t fake, those kids are not alright.
its nothing to do with brainrot, its the same shit that makes your dad the single dumbest person you’ve ever seen whenever he speaks on politics.
People have done things where they start with a clean VM and set up something like Youtube, watching the most innocuous of things. Doesn’t take too long before they start getting the red pill shit.
That doesn’t happen with broadcast media. You don’t start off watching, say, C-SPAN or PBS, and next thing you know you are getting shown Nazi propaganda.
you have to consciously consume it though, as a consumer of information and media, you hold a responsibility to ensure that what you’re consuming is both good, and factually accurate. If you aren’t doing that, that’s your fault.
People can argue all they want about content algorithms pushing this content, it’s because it’s good content, that’s why its fucking propaganda. It wouldn’t be if it didn’t.
You really don’t have to consciously consume it. You can literally leave auto-play on YouTube and it will steadily pull you down the rabbit hole. These people aren’t logging in to
nazi.comand ravenously looking for content (at least most aren’t).It’s served directly to them in mainstream platforms, prepared exactly how they like it. And they’re the first generation to be bombarded by this algorithmic targeting for their entire lives.
Should adults still be responsible for what they consume and analyzing it critically? Of course. But given we’re in unprecedented territory and this is (at most) their second time voting in a presidential cycle, I’ll give them a mulligan.
You really don’t have to consciously consume it. You can literally leave auto-play on YouTube and it will steadily pull you down the rabbit hole. These people aren’t logging in to nazi.com and ravenously looking for content (at least most aren’t).
maybe if you have degenerative brain damage, or are asleep, otherwise yes, you are making the conscious choice to watch nazis talk about nazi things for 3 hours, that’s literally something you consciously engage with simply by listening to, or even looking at.
This is why it’s so important to be conscious of the media you’re consuming, in the same way it’s important to be conscious about the products you’re buying and the services you’re using.
I’ll give them a mulligan.
look bro, all i’m saying is that you don’t accidentally become a nazi, if i gave you a knife, and told you to murder somebody, and walked away, you wouldn’t do that, you would probably call the police on me because that’s really fucking weird.
No, they’re making a conscious choice to use the platform. The content itself is whatever pops up and looks entertaining.
If the algorthim shows you 2 center-right videos, 3 hard-right videos, and one nazi rant then are you choosing to be a nazi by watching the center right ones?
Its never actually 3 hours of nazi things. Its an otherwise entertaining video making some off color jokes. It’s a streamer going on one politically dubious rant in a 6 hour stream. It’s a weekly podcast talking to “interesting” people; some benign, some funny, some actual problems… It’s about normalizing the conversation and the ideas. Nobody is getting handed a knife.
Yeah, there are some people take the red pill and actively go down the conspiracy rabbit hole and watch nazi shit. But I’m not gonna go out of my way to crucify people who have shitty ideas in their head at some point, there are lots of people that have stories of escaping the funnel.
Because at the end of the day a vote is just voicing an opinion to most people.
“I was told tariffs aren’t a bad idea”… “Musk has points that there might be wasteful spending”… “Well Rogan endorsed him haha”…
If they were told they’re getting drafted to invade Greenland before they voted, they look at you the same way as the knife guy.
If it’s a human failing then no, it should be regulated against to prevent abuse.
there are definitely arguments to regulate against it, i’m not here to make those arguments, or argue against it, i’m just here to argue that you as an individual person have a right to hold yourself responsible for the media you consume, it’s not difficult, it’s taught to you in high school, assuming you can read and write, if you went to college, great, you literally do that the entire time you’re there, that’s the one thing you should be doing.
If you don’t and you work in a blue collar job, it probably requires similar attention from you in the same manner, just apply it universally.
I realize that I, as an individual can make choices and am responsible for those choices. I’m not here to talk about that today, I’m only referring to the fact that when a natural human failing is set upon by money men with the intention of exploitation it is only regulation or destruction that will end that exploitation.
People don’t want to hear the truth. Look at the sales on fiction vs. non-fiction.
That’s not a problem in most media because most of the time people are honest about what’s fiction and what’s non-fiction.
On social media, people have these para-social relationships with the people making the content that makes them want the content creators to be “authentic”. Problem is the algorithms don’t select for actual authenticity, because people prefer fiction over reality. So instead people making content need to appear to be authentic to get the para-social juice, but give people fiction because that’s what people really want.
Adults who remember the times before social media became dominant are better equipped to understand the distinction between the fiction social media presents us from reality. To those raised on this content, what’s on social media is reality.
People don’t want to hear the truth. Look at the sales on fiction vs. non-fiction.
This is an unfair comparison, it’s like taking university textbook sales and comparing it to the bible and going “clearly people don’t want science and data!”
To be fair, it is probably a true statement, if you were to analyze the content and media that people consume, it’s likely to be very low in “hard facts” so i will give you that one, i just think it’s an unreasonable comparison to be making.
A lot of the big sales in non-fiction (at least the heavily fact valued ones) are going to be books about like, psychology, sociology, math, science, biology, the one weird guy who wrote 20 books on trains because he has an extremely bizarre knowledge based on like three specific trains in general, probably a book about a plane as well, because why not. And a handful of other boring educational books, shit like cookbooks, machining, manufacturing, etc…
I’m not sure how much “based on a true story” bleeds into non-fiction, but i’m basing on a strict separator so.
To those raised on this content, what’s on social media is reality.
and to be fair, that’s because it literally is, modern social life has moved to social media, people are lonelier than ever, there’s a reason for it.
Adults who remember the times before social media became dominant are better equipped to understand the distinction between the fiction social media presents us from reality.
I really do think (fear) that may be true, and that’s probably why I go on about teaching media literacy and critical thinking (most especially spotting logical fallacies) so much.
I already think many that were around before social media were ill-equipped as-is (as an example - how many people think “reality television” is not heavily edited and heavily scripted? That artifice came on the scene before social media did and many were and are duped by it); I worry even more about people raised on it, many of them foolishly thinking that knowing their way around apps and certain sites makes them more “media-savvy”, thinking that “my generation” just gets this like no other when it’s definitely a prior generation that has handed them these things.
This kind of thinking - that your generation is somehow uniquely equipped like no other prior human beings before - is complete delusion. It’s not like this conceit is confined to gen alpha or z or whatever, either - virtually every generation has their version of it.
This kind of thinking - that your generation is somehow uniquely equipped like no other prior human beings before - is complete delusion
to be completely devils advocate here, the human mind is not a static blob of inputs and outputs, it’s a variable soup of neurons with connections between different neurons as they try and establish patterns and reasons between things. People who have grown up today, compared to people who grew up 200 years ago, are quite literally fundamentally different. Every generation is raised differently to the previous, it’s why every generation behaves differently to the previous generations. It’s just that the difference is less significant than most would think.
The entire reason why “post truth society” is even a thing now is because of this fundamental operation of human psychology, shit changes, and we change with the shit.
Cold War brain rot?
political propaganda and uncritically consuming information will turn you into a sheep faster than dressing up as one.
I mean, that’s what I call brain rot, but fair enough. Most people use it to mean saying skibidi too much.
skibidi toilet is a form of brain rot. That’s why it’s called brain rot.
I don’t know what brain rotted the Gen Z boys in a way that didn’t work on the Gen Z girls but I can tell you it wasn’t fake, those kids are not alright.
A lot of it is all that “manosphere” grievance propaganda shit – reels them right in.
It’s been that way for a while, Gen Z boys aren’t the first to fall for it. 10 years ago it was gamergate, and before that there was talk radio like Rush Limbaugh rambling on about “feminazis.”
That’s been “conservatives” best recruitment tool for years. And it generally works up until the boys realize they’re serious about the “no masturbation” rule. Although by that point they’ve generally already got them hooked on other propaganda.
Yeah the left and the right both have a sexually conservative faction and in my experience pointing to the other’s has long been an effective tactic for recruiting young men.
The people that constructed the hate radio machine that takes a daily dump in the skull of millions of magazombies would have loooooved to have something like The Algorithm at their disposal.
When you look at the damage they managed to do with decades of the Poutrage Industrial Complex they had with radio/cable, just imagine the shitshow they will manage with decades more of The Algorithm…
The people that constructed the hate radio machine that takes a daily dump in the skull of millions of magazombies would have loooooved to have something like The Algorithm at their disposal.
Uhhh… those people are the ones that control the algorithms now. Have you not been paying attention?
I didn’t say they were necessarily a different set of people. They are definitely the same types. I’m just saying the Roger Ailes would have loved to have the algorithm at their disposal at the time they built Faux. Same for the money behind radical right wing talk radio.
I guess now they captured much of cable, radio and local TV (when you add in Sinclair) - and they seemingly control much of the siren servers on the 'net now, too.
There was a pipeline of radicalization to the right that specifically targeted young men starting with young millennials. In my day it was gamergate, these days it’s tate
Don’t underestimate right wing populism
Well yeah, the memes have stopped.
Glad we chose a candidate on important metrics. Such as how lit their meme game is …
I don’t think it is young people that are the problem. Recall, it is largely billionaires and elderly statesmen that either supported the coup, or stood aside. Of all people, they should understand the consequences and it is their job to guide the nation. That includes telling people how neat government programs can be.
Our most influential people either failed to communicate, or are aligned with the plot to some degree. Young folks are too busy slaving away to dedicate time to politics, which requires time, money, and education. Things that society has consistently transferred towards the wealthy, while denying the poor.
I shouldn’t be surprised that so many kids liked the Orange Idiot, but I am somehow. Barely, but I am.
He has that TV personality rizz.
Either USSA 18-29-years-old are weird, or newsweek is corporate shill. Mix in one bag
mass deportation plan, targeting of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, and suggesting that the U.S. will “take over” the Gaza Strip and resettle Palestinians from the area while it is rebuilt.
and ignore everything else.
Well, thank Faust, I am not in Memericas.
good, gen z stays winning, mostly…
